The Adventures of OSAKA JOE, PSYCHIC DETECTIVE
by Thimble
Summary: He's a psychic detective, she's the avatar of an absent-minded angel: THEY CATCH CARDS. Now playing: "Osaka Joe and the Dame from China, Part 3" and a small intermission piece.
1. Osaka Joe: Ink

PLEASE READ THIS FIRST

What follow are the adventures of a fictional (ie. made up by me) Card Captor working approximately in the 70s. You'll see a lot of the Clow Cards (hopefully in interesting ways), Keroberous, and various other aspects of the Clamp setting. DISCLAIMER: they belong to Clamp; no profit is made by me in this enterprise.

You will also see OCs: Osaka Joe the Captor in question and his assistant Honourable Secretary Jade Platter, a high-kicking Chinese dame, and various other original bits and pieces. If you're looking for another iteration of Sakura and Syaoran's romance, health to you but best read something else on the site.

That being said: Cheers! Enjoy! Reviews aren't expected, but undeniably make me happy!

**from The Wham Bam Adventures of OSAKA JOE, PSYCHIC DETECTIVE**

Title: Osaka Joe: Ink  
Fandom: Card Captor Sakura  
Summary: Ever wanted to get lost in a picture?  
Characters: You, Osaka Joe (OC), Jade Platter (Yue), Keroberous  
Warnings: Artistic Wank

Cards Appearing: the Create, the Erase

**Osaka Joe: Ink**

_Old still pond,  
Frog leaps in!  
Sound of water_

_Basho_

You have a new book, a book of paper made for ink painting. With restrained glee you open it and carefully detach a sheet of the fine yellow stuff. In a high cramped apartment, surrounded by whirring restless traffic noises and the smells of damp and the neighbours' cooking, you kneel before a low table covered with blanketing. You lay the paper on it, and secure the corners with four pebbles: one round and creamy-white, two jagged grey, and the last a lump of white-swirled green. To one side, a baby's peevish wail scratches your ears; to another, someone's illicit cat defecates and the smell sneaks through the walls. But you smile: you are about to enter another world.

The page rests like cool untouched water under your lightly held, upright brush, and you hesitate - any stroke you make cannot be unmade. A drop falls moistly from the brush; you grin fiercely and turn the ink into circular ripples opening out in the water, sketch lightly a pair of loose-limbed frogs gliding through water plants, smell the breathing green of your picture.

Puzzled, you turn. Could you always hear the river from this high apartment? Scolding, cooing voices try to quiet the baby; nearby two people make love. Your breathing slows and your spine straightens to fall loosely away from the nape of your neck: you make shy vermilion fish to join the frogs.

The shadow of your sleeve brushes the page and they flee to the shelter of waterweed. Eh? You bring out a bird, a little hopping sparrow – it whirs across the room and squeaks at your window.

Excited, you make a horse, valiant and rearing, let the roughness of the brush suggest shaggy fetlocks and surging hindquarters. It breaks through your fragile door and dashes indignantly down the corridor. You touch the ragged edges of the frame thoughtfully. Perhaps there will be trouble with the Residents' Association. Already querulous voices are raised. You narrow your eyes and use a wide dry brush to suggest heavy oak uprights, an uncompromising barrier between you and everywhere else.

You bring out more animals – a sharp-eyed fox, two gently hopping rabbits, cool squirmy fish and eels and watercress for the pond. Footsteps sound in the hall and someone knocks on your heavy door, calling. You paint wind in grass to blow away the voices, almost lose yourself in the exquisite dotting of wildflowers and tiny insects.

A scratching at your window, and a stranger's careful friendly voice: "Hey, hey friend, can I come in? We need to-"

Scowling, you begin a landscape of water and high mountains in the classic style, away from any city you know. The great rough rocks loom over you and around you, supporting gnarled pine trees in friendly crevices; the stippled lichen growing on the stone flakes under your fingers. Calm slow water laps against the shore.

Then a narrow-hulled boat piled with undetermined baggage, propelled by a short, wide boatman, drifts across the river between the high mountains. A passenger sits in the stern, with a hat pulled down over his eyes and a long staff with a red-eyed bird's head leaning against his shoulder. He looks up and smiles.

You didn't paint him.

Panicking, you take a wet brush and draw a flock of black birds wheeling in the sepia skies of evening between them. They circle and scream – you hear a human cry, and a thud, draw more birds. Something roars and pads heavily towards you; you rip out more birds until they fill all the air with their frantic beating, scream your fear and anger into black, black ink. Through the cloud of dark feathers you see the passenger swinging his bird-headed staff and clearing away your created birds, moving ever forward. You drop the brush and cover your head with your arms.

Silence.

A smell of tobacco and you look up. It is the passenger, his wide-brimmed hat cocked back over his forehead. Scratchy ink-work in sepia shows crow's-feet around black eyes in a nice little character portrait, but some fool has been careless in the studio and splattered vermilion carelessly about the picture. Warm hands cover yours. "Hey, friend," he burrs in an Osakan drawl. "Can you draw a blank page for me?" He puts the brush in your hand and looks at you expectantly.

The page is bare. Or it is a paste-board card covered with elaborate patterning. It is both. It is neither.

The passenger kneels by the prone figure of the boatman, a woman, and brushes hair from her face. She opens her eyes, says, "Is fix?" and he nods. Some kind of winged cat that you never drew licks the blood off his face and looks at him mournfully, black streaks coming down from its eyes like tears. The passenger smiles at you.

"Hey," he says, "if we take you out to dinner, will you tell us about your painting?"

*

NOTES: Most of the painting technique comes from _The Chinese Brush Painting Studio_, by Pauline Cherrett.

(Giant winged cats don't fit the style of traditional Chinese ink painting, so Kero hid in the bottom of the boat while they were sneaking through the painting.)

Oh yes, the Osaka Joe Adventures are in direct continuity with my prequel fic "Faces of the Moon".


	2. Osaka Joe and the Lost Cards 1

**Osaka Joe and the Lost Cards**

Fandom: Card Captor Sakura  
Rating: G  
Summary: Stretching their wings  
Characters: Osaka Joe, Keroberous  
Notes/Warnings: Set several years before "Osaka Joe: Ink".

Cards appearing: the Fly, the Bubble

_One day many years ago a man walked along and __stood in the sound of the ocean on a cold sunless shore... "__I'll make a voice like __all of time and all of the fog that ever was..."_

_Ray Bradbury, "The Fog Horn"_

_Part 1_

A study in monochrome: the dark tumbled stones of the headland, and the dark hills over it, and the churning sea beside it, all laid over with a white blanket of lowering fog. A lighthouse keeper in his heavy coat toils along the strand. In the fog the pale clean shape of the lighthouse is almost lost. The sigh of rolling surf is muffled in the keeper's ears by the fog's hanging white droplets, and they bead and run down the deep-graven lines of his face.

A cry of loss and longing sounds through the blank whiteness. The keeper raises his head as the shadows of great wings drift over him, awesome and terrible in their arching and again the cry sounds, a lonely voice out of the fog.

And after the shadow wings trail a thread with a smaller shadow at the end of it, and a tiny voice shouting: _"WeeeeeeeeHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!"_

_Earlier:_

On a slope in one of the pokier districts of Tokyo, one thrown up just after the war and yet to be swept away in one of the tsunamis of city development, there was a little house with a tiled roof. In its narrow single room, already crowded with filing cabinets and bookcases, someone had set up a folding table on top of the tatami matting and set up a game of Patience while his host washed dishes in the tiny tiled area at the end of the room. A radio played the wailing strains of Enka: a woman sing-speaking of lost love while a deep shakuhachi flute wept with her.

The cardplayer gazed sternly at the cards. Then, carefully eying the dishwasher, he picked up one of the down-turned piles of cards and sorted through it until he found an ace, which he set down above his black and red spread. Whistling innocently, he resumed the game. His tail waved languidly.

The dishwasher finished drying the plates. He was a slight man, with short cut bristly black hair that made him look a little like a ninja duckling, and a mobile face that was more interesting than handsome. At this time he wore dark pinstriped trousers held by braces laid over a plain white shirt, with the sleeves rolled up about his forearms. He padded in socks to the card table and eyed the spread intensely. The card-player shifted uncertainly on the rickety table but his small size barely made it creak. The little white wings that sprouted from his otherwise lion-cub-ish shoulders were set at a determinedly nonchalent angle.

"Something to say?" he said at last.

The dishwasher pointed fiercely with his water-wrinkled finger at a particular card, and then at another. The winged lioncub stared at him from lowered eyelids. "You can't put a black queen on a black king. It doesn't work that way."

"Oh!" said the dishwasher. "Sorry 'bout that, Keroberous-san."

Keroberous's wings shivered slightly. "There's nothing to apologise for. Er, Master."

The dishwasher padded back to the sink and came back with two bottles of Enjuku low-malt beer. He opened them and set one on the table. Keroberous beamed like unto the sun in her great shining. "But that's a great apology. Kanpai!" They clinked bottles and the game continued, the dishwasher resting his chin on pillowing hands and watching Keroberous more than the game as the little magical beast plied the cards with glowering intensity.

There was an eye, tiny, round, and black as a bird's. Osaka watched it flick back and forth, light and intent. Every now and then a delicate lid blinked over it, with tiny wrinkles radiating from the corners. The eyelid and the round face it belonged to were covered with feathers, canary yellow and almost as fine as down, and he saw with fascination that they extended over the round teddy-bear ears, the plump lion-cub body, around a pair of small white wings sprouting from the shoulders, and down a narrow sinuous tail which was tipped by a dandelion tuft of white fur.

The game paused. Keroberous _hmmmm_ed and stared at the cards. The air above the spread seemed to shimmer as if in a heat haze. Osaka waited, waited and watched until his _other_ eyes opened, and he saw the shimmer deepen into a tiny cloud, dark and thunderous with tiny zigzagging levinbolts. His mouth quirked into a smile, sidewise, with the corner of his mouth, and he went back for more beer. As he reached into the fridge he heard a rapid shuffling through of the cards and then a magnificent crow of victory.

He applauded the magical beast as he preened on the table. "Well done, Keroberous...kun."

Keroberous beamed. "I'm just _that good_. Master."

The wailing music of the radio changed to a news report, read by an announcer with a voice as smooth and sweet as red bean paste. Halfway through the standard news was an 'oddspot', about a great white bird, presumed to be a rare species of albatross, that had been sighted off the coast. Keroberous and Osaka's eyes met. "Could it be?"

"The Fly card _was_ following the winds when we lost her that second time."

"You up for Round Three? Master?"

Osaka beamed, his eyes closing into happy crescents. "I've been practicing." He held up two fingers in a V.

He shrugged into his coat and grabbed a leather satchel from beside the door. "Wait!" cried Keroberous, pointing to a wide-brimmed fedora hat on a stand by the door. Osaka nodded, and clapped it onto his head as he ran.


	3. Osaka Joe and the Lost Cards 2

_**Part 2**_

Step. Crunch of gravel. Feel the dark cord hanging from sensitive fingertips and the sway of the cord's pendulum. Osaka Joe made a slow cautions way down the beach, his eyes closed into bare slits. His new assistant floated behind, a bright blob of yellow in the eerie gray: "Hey, don't you think this is spooky? I think the fog is spooky. There could be monsters out there, anywhere, waiting to eat us! 'Cause monsters _do_ that." A dark shape loomed out of the fog and Keroberous screamed and hid inside Osaka's scuffed leather satchel.

Osaka flipped the pendulum into his sleeve and tipped the brim of his hat. "Good afternoon," he said politely.

"Mmmnf," replied the keeper. He was a short man, and wide, made wider by the heavy sweaters and raincoats he wore against the chill, and the deep lines of his face and hanging brow made him look impassive as he eyed Osaka, who dressed still in his natty pinstripe suit, though his shoes had lost their polish from frequent soaking and he shivered slightly.

"The fog is very heavy, ain't it?" said Osaka.

"Mmnf."

"Ask him about the Mysterious Bird," whispered Keroberous, urgently and not very quietly from the satchel.

"Begging your pardon, Keeper-san," said Osaka, "might I not ask if there have been any more sightin's of that big white bird we've been hearing about on the news?"

"Mmmnf."

"Thank you kindly," said Osaka, flashing white teeth. He sneezed.

The keeper turned abruptly and walked away. He stopped abruptly after a handful of paces and gestured abruptly to Osaka. "Come," he said, and led the detective to the Iragosaki lighthouse.

**

It was warm inside, with a steel woodburning stove and an iron teakettle. The keeper, still nameless, left Osaka there to warm up on the outside by the fire, and on the inside with a huge mug of black tea and a dash of strong spirits.

"Now that is an amiable fellow," said Osaka, happily, as soon as the door was shut.

"Mmmf-mmf!" said Keroberous, struggling out of the satchel. "What do you keep in here, horse hair?" His head and torso came out, wrapped awkwardly in some kind of coarse black rope.

"Why yes," said Osaka beautifically, "sort of." He lifted the whole mess – Keroberous included – out of the bag and began to tease one end of it loose.

"Come again?"

" 'Even a passionless one can be bound in a woman's hair,' " the man quoted.

"I can hear you talking," said Keroberous, "but the sense is not coming through."

"You'll understand when you're older, Keroberous-kun." But the little winged lion-cub was growling dangerously, so the detective hastily explained as he unwound more of the tangles. "I haven't any attack cards yet, and last time we tackled the Fly she went halfway through the net and then the brick wall before bringing them down."

"You spotted all that?" interrupted Keroberous. "I thought you were half silly with the flowerpot on your head and the-"

"Be that as it may," Osaka said hastily, "I'm thinking she controls her ethereal to material ratio. This rope should snag the flyin' lady however she goes."

"That's silly!" said Keroberous, putting paws to his hips and fluttering his wings loftily. "It'll never work."

"As you say," said the detective mildly.

"Hey, where did you get that thing from, anyway?"

"I, er, _know_ a shrine-keeper who does exorcisms. She let me borrow some of her gear."

"... Oh."

Keroberous looked around the circular room curiously. "You know, this looks a lot like the place we had in Scotland. Clow got his hands on a tower one way or another and – let's just say I talked with the sheep a lot."

"I see. You wanna take a look up top?"

"Oh, why not?"

Upstairs, they leaned against the white metal railing and stared into the whiter fog. The glass-walled dome behind them glowed with hot-burning kerosene, a welcome warmth to their backs. Osaka opened his mouth and breathed more fog." 'I'll make a voice like all of time and all of the fog that ever was,' " he said musingly. " 'Like an empty bed beside you all night long, and like an empty house when you open the door, and like trees in autumn with no leaves. A sound like the birds flyin' south, crying...' "

Osaka watched with interest as the little magical beast's ears began to vibrate. He shook his pendulum out of his sleeve and watched it sway in the same direction as Keroberous's tail, even as the little beast said, "Uh, Master? I think the Fly is on its way."

A cry sounded out of the fog, deep and lonely as a foghorn.

"Say, Kero-kun," Osaka commented, stowing the pendulum in his breast pocket and taking out an ivory, bird-headed pipe, "This tower Clow-sensei had, it was a lighthouse? Yes? If the Fly gets here and finds a place like her old home, and she finds _you,_ and then there's another guy who _isn't_ Clow-sensei... would she be... angry?"

"Uh..."


	4. Osaka Joe and the Lost Cards 3

_**Part 3**_

The deep mournful cry sounded out of the fog, and a white bird shape shape formed out of it, awesome and terrible and coming at them fast, arrowing to the tower like a lover bent on a suicide pact.

"Whatever happens, Kero-kun," said Osaka urgently. "I, I-"

"Yes, master?"

"I value my hat exceedingly. Please look after it." He entrusted his precious fedora to the little magical beast and folded Keroberous's yellow paws around the brim. He lifted the coils of twisted hair and swung it at the great bird, catching its neck in a black noose. He ran off the balcony and leapt, using his weight to shift the bird's course ever-so-slightly as he swung out into the white void.

The great arching wings tilted – Keroberous ducked involuntarily as they skimmed over his head and barely missed the bulb of the lighthouse tower. He revved up his own wings and hopped up on the rail for a grand leap after them – the rules be damned - when he heard, _"Stay by the tower! I don't want to lose you!" _Keroberous said a bad word.

**

Out in the fog Osaka hauled his way up the black rope, hand by foot by arm tangled about a knot. He wasn't entirely sure how high up they were, but couldn't hold back a wail of glee as they skimmed over a large pile of tumble rocks. The Fly veered in the air and Osaka's numb hands slipped on the rope so that he slid down as they skimmed over the achingly cold surf. "Hey!" he called up, hooking his foot in a loop of hairy rope. "I know I'm not him, I'm not Clow-sensei. I'm just a dumb guy who found a deck of cards one day, is all. But I can be a home for you." He loosened one cold-struck hand and fumbled for his ivory pipe. The blood-bead eyes of the pipe's bird head glared at him. "So maybe we can come to an understanding, hey?" He swung the pipe and began to chant a magical contract.

**

Keroberous perched on the rail of the lighthouse, vibrating with anxiety. Out in the fog magic flared like a tiny, perfect bell ringing. He swallowed hard and flew out after it. Then when the magic died he flew after the deep mournful cries of the bird. Then, lost and lonely and very cold, he looked for the light of the tower...

Much later, shivering badly, Keroberous searched along the rocky beach, and found a pile of foam scudding awkwardly in the fitful waves. The foam was enormous, piled high and white, and had an odd fragrance, sort of pleasant, like sandalwood and lavender and lemon. In the middle of it floated Osaka Joe, spread-eagled, drifting loosely in the waves. He opened his eyes when Keroberous came near. "Are we there yet?"

Keroberous hit him on the head with the hat. "You stupid-"

Osaka smiled very sweetly and rose out of the foam, which fell loosely away leaving the man dry, neat, and polished, and transformed into a card, which he pocketed. "I think that went very well, don't you? We had a nice chat, the flyin' lady and I, and I think the next time we meet there will surely be a-"

In an urge to cheering, Keroberous said, "Don't worry, Master, it's a challenge thing - they won't all try to kill you!"

"Call me 'Boss' ," said Osaka.

"Hmmph!" said Keroberous, then "Eep!" as the lighthouse keeper loomed out of the fog. He dived under Osaka's coat, who discreetly tucked his assistant's tail under there as well, and touched his hat politely to the keeper.

"Afternoon," he said. "Thank you kindly for all your help."

The keeper looked the detective up and down, from his damp fedora to his beautifully polished shoes. "Mmmnf," he said.

Osaka waved again, and walked away.

_**Epilogue**_

_There is a land where grey ghost trees grasp the ground with crooked finger roots, where winter's snows lie white and deep and thunderclouds clump the skies... _

_But summer comes and rainbows rise and flowers star the grasses._

_from "The Windwoman" by Ron Bacon_

Between two grey emotionless skyscrapers somewhere in Tokyo, there is a small vacant lot, with a handful of scrubby trees and a wide-mouthed pipe to handle storm-water. Its existence adds some greenery to keep oxygen in the city's air, but that's about all. Well, that was about all _yesterday._

Today Osaka Joe's slow weary pace to the sway of his pendulum leads him to a lot abundant with a wide-branched graceful tree, which seems to call the sunlight to warm its swaying green leaf-shawl and bring out veridian grass and vibrant out-of-season flowers.

Osaka stops, and scratches his head. Then he dips his hand into his suit pocket and withdraws two gaudy Clow Cards. He displays them to the verdant lot and says, "Hey there, darlin's, how's business? You two're the Wood and the Flower, am I right? I think I'm right. You want to come join your friends in the deck? Ah? Ah?"

The tree rustles its leaves. Delicate petals of peach blossom fall through the warm air. Silence.

Osaka sighs and kicks off his shoes, lying down in a moss-covered crook of the tree's great,kind roots. "We can talk about it in the morning," he mumbles, and falls asleep, still wriggling his toes in the sunlight.

_End Osaka Joe and the Lost Cards_

_NOTES:_

Epigraph and related quotes from "The Fog Horn" by Ray Bradbury, written 1951. Also, there is an undeniable similarity of theme between the two stories.

_Enjuku low-malt beer - _"Happoshu" (low-malt beer) is in a slightly different tax-category to "biiru" (ordinary malt beer) and isn't allowed to be labelled "biiru", which you really don't need to know for this story but what the hey. It's cheaper. Sorry, research didn't turn up whether the Enjuku brand was available in the '70s. But I tried.

_feathers, canary yellow and almost as fine as down – _Is there any close up shot in manga or anime of Keroberous's hide? I don't think so, so bird feathers it is, in my personal canon anyway.

_the Iragosaki lighthouse – _picture here (second from the top): http:// www. / ~rowlett/ lighthouse/

_when the magic died_ – when the wand was unleashed to bind a Card, there was a strong magic release – an ideal beacon for Keroberous to home in on. After the binding failed, there was the loose magic of the Fly (a strong card), and the bound magic of the Bubble (quite weak, if useful. Technically it's for giving a nice hot bath, but Osaka is inventive and found it also fends off hypothermia yay!). Keroberous just woke up and his magical senses aren't all that: he had trouble tracking the Bubble.


	5. Osaka Joe and the Dame from China 1

Title: Osaka Joe and the Dame from China 1  
Fandom: Card Captor Sakura  
Series: The Wham Bam Adventures of OSAKA JOE, PSYCHIC DETECTIVE

Summary:

Cards Appearing: The Through, The Glow  
Notes/Warnings:

**Osaka Joe and the Dame from China**

"Oh sure," he said, "this _looks_ exciting and romantic but no, it's really not. It's like swooning in someone's arms," he opined thoughtfully, "which, you know, sounds fun, you say, 'Hey, I could do with a good swoon,' but when it happens everybody's just terribly, terribly embarrassed. Teh. Isn't that right, darlin'?" Osaka Joe looked up from the moss-slippery tiles of the near-vertical steeple he was cautiously climbing, and smiled at the woman who clutched the weathervane at the top as if it were, so to speak, her hope of heaven.

"Not to worry, we'll get you down in no time," he said.

The woman blinked vivid green eyes at him.

_"Shenme?"_ she said.

_Earlier:_

He was born with noticing eyes and a sense for the world's mysteries; also, a face best described as 'mobile', dense black hair, and a small, handy, agile frame. He was a detective, a psychic detective, which sometimes meant guessing the right answer and proving it after, and sometimes meant running away very fast because the badger-spirit who ran the bookstore on the corner was pissed he'd pointed out her more eccentric pricing policies to the punters. He dressed well, in a pinstripe suit older than himself and a fedora hat, and affected a carved ivory pipe, bird-headed, which he kept like a flower in his buttonhole and liked to twirl between neat, clever fingers. Sometimes he even smoked with it.

The life of a psychic detective is one of stops and starts. Today, it looked to be stopped. No clients had come through the doors to the narrow, downstairs office in days and the narrower private room upstairs was sleepy with damp summer heat, the grass smell of tatami matting, and the song of cicadas sounding through the window in the slanting, tiled roof. Even so, Osaka Joe, the detective in question, was quietly enthusiastic as he packed his equipment satchel with pendulums, a book of I Ching, and a nice set of dowsing rods.

His assistant looked at him sleepily, resting his chin on a cushion on the low table. "Where are ya going, Boss? We don't have any jobs. Or, and I hate to mention this, money."

"Fortune-telling, fortune-telling," Osaka said airily. "Trust me, I'm a detective."

"Whatever you say, Boss," his assistant, a little winged lion-beast, said twirling his yellow tail doubtfully.

_Now:_

The dame shrieked and lost her hold on the spire, sliding in a scrabbling manner to the edge. Osaka caught her by the wrist and helped her find a precarious anchorage against the wind. "Easy, miss: I've got you."

She looked at him blankly. _"Shenme?"_ She was a small woman, just Osaka's height, and nicely plump (hot dang!), her face smooth and round as a pork-bun, dressed in a loose, dark, high-collared tunic and trousers, her feet in slippers scrabbling at the slanting tires of the church steeple even as she clutched Osaka's hand in a death grip. Her glossy black hair would have been jaw-length with flat-cut bangs across her brows if it hadn't been blown wild by the wind and her vivid almond-shaped eyes were wide and terrified. "Help. Assistance please."

_Earlier:_

Myriad divinations, the exact nature of which the detective did not choose to divulge, had led the gallant pair to a part of Tokyo that Osaka was unfamiliar with. He _could_ at this point have followed his book of street maps.. Alas, the book was out of date or had been drawn by a creature of darkest evil, one of the two, and Keroberous was no help at _all,_ except for pointing out a stand that sold rather nice takoyaki balls on skewers. After passing the same street-sign three different times, Osaka put the book away, smiled vaguely and amiably, and ambled (earnestly) through the neighbourhood, waving to the nice old ladies as he went.

_Pin pon!_ As he was pausing to admire a Christian church on the corner, all stained glass and spires in place of shrine gates he heard, faintly and above them, "Help! Assistance please!" At the top of the spire was a dark, wriggling blot.

"Kero-kun, I need you to scout."

"I'm on it, Boss," the small winged lion-cub exclaimed, and zoomed into the air, streaking corkscrews into the blue. He was back soon. "You got yourself a dame, Boss, and she's pretty!"

Osaka Joe squinted up at the spire. This was going to be interesting. There was no black grid-work of scaffolding around the spire, and he couldn't, from here spot a trap-door that she might have climbed through. He had no idea how she'd got up there. He fancied he knew how to get her down, though.

"Kero-kun, tell her that help is on its way!"

"But, but, she'll see me, Boss. Didn't we have a Very Long Talk about this?"

"I don't want the dame to panic. You might kinda shout from where she isn't looking maybe."

"A mysterious voice from above... it's a bit of a giveaway that something weird is going on, yeah Boss?"

"But she won't _know_," explained Osaka Joe. "Mystery is everything. " He set his ivory, bird-headed pipe between his teeth and tipped his fedora to a rakish angle. "I'm going in."

_Now:_

With much coaxing, Osaka managed to transfer half of the small Chinese woman's death-grip to his own neck.

"Awright," he muttered, "just a little further." Crabbing gingerly over the shingles, they inched back to the part of the steeple that was over the narrow window Osaka had climbed through. At a stronger gust of wind, the dame choked off another scream. "Easy there, missy. Scream all you like but keep hanging on." She glared at him. He grinned at her, and the bit of gold in one of his front teeth caught the light, _ting! _"You can yell at me all ya want. Settles the blood."

They slipped and skidded halfway down the steeple. "Oh dear. Not to worry, look, there's the window right there." There wasn't far to go really. It was just that the bitter wind was picking up and it was hard to hold on and going over the edge would be tricky. Nice view, mind. The dame skidded some more and grabbed onto his ankles with a death-like grip. Osaka made a desperate grab for the glowing disc of the Through card, but his fingertips just missed the edge, and then they were both sliding dangerously close to the edge. Osaka brought to mind the layout of the building. There was another roof below, studded with decorative iron spikes. He didn't look forward to landing on it.

"Time for Plan B!" he shouted, grabbing the dame about her midsection. They slid down, almost uncontrollably, too quickly to stop. Osaka aimed for the edge of the steeple and set his feet with care. When they hit the edge his knees bent, flexed, pushed.

And then they were falling, out into the void.

_Earlier:_

"Well, what _kind _of fortune-telling?" Keroberous said in exasperation.

"Extra lucky. Double plus great good fortune!"

NOTES:

_He was born with noticing eyes and a sense for the world's mysteries..._ The _shape_ of the opening line, though not the content, was lifted from _Scaramouche_, by Rafael Sabatini. Go read Sabatini: you'll like it.

_"Shenme?"_ Mandarin for "What?"


	6. Osaka Joe and the Dame from China 2

**Osaka Joe and the Dame from China 2**

Things to think about when you're falling:

Ears full of wind roar

Air chilling skin-sweat

The clasp of soft woman-flesh and her smell - dust and ozone and, cutting through that, a sharp musk of fear

Ground fast approaching with the iron spears of the fences and the blank stone houses of the graves.

Osaka Joe briefly mourned his missing hat, hugged the woman tight, and tugged his birdheaded pipe and a large brightly coloured playing card out of his front pocket. "O pipe that hides the powers of the Dark," he chanted, setting each reverberating word with care, "I, Osaka Joe, under the Terms of our Contract, do summon thee." He shook the pipe so that it extended, somehow, into a staff as long as he was tall and swung it out.

There was a card spinning gently down. He aimed the blood-eyed bird's head to it. "Through Card," he thundered, "RELEASE!"

And then he muttered, "I'm trusting you, m'doll, m'darlin', pick a good spot pl-"

The grey slabs and dark earth of the yard were suddenly very large. Shrieking wind filled his ears. Could he reach? Osaka flung out the staff, reaching to a stone dead house's roof

A golden disc flashed into being under his foot. He caught it with the staff's beak.

And then there was _that moment_ – like floating in golden champagne, like fireworks in the skull like being handled firmly but gently by a woman who wasn't there, swinging them around to _the other side._..

Which was a dark place that smelled of damp stone and earth. High above, a golden woman hanging from the gold disk of the Through flickered a little, flickered in on herself, and was gone.

Osaka patted the pockets of his suit until he found one of his other significant possessions, a brass zippo lighter. Three spins of the starter had a small flame that didn't really illuminate the darkness, but let himself and his companion see each other. The dame stood there, her face round like a moon as tangled chin-length hair and rumpled dark, plain clothes faded into the blackness around them. She was visibly trembling. Memory told him that her eyes were very green, but in this light all he could see was that they were narrowed into tiny glaring slits. (He would realise, some time later, that much of her distress had been from her dishevelled appearance, and possibly the memory that, however unfond of heights she might be, she'd actually screamed up there. But that was later.)

"Are you alright, darlin'?" Osaka asked, lifting his lighter for a better view. "No broken bones or bruises?"

She paused, eyebrows like clean-inked brush-strokes rising in puzzlement. "_Shenme?_"

Ah, yes, not from around here. In his very best Kanto-ben, he enunciated slowly and carefully: "Good afternoon. I am pleased to meet you. I am Osaka Joe," he added, tapping his chest.

"You. Egg of turtle. Is."

Osaka beamed. "I suppose I am, darlin'. I am pleased to meet you," he said again, bowing formally.

The dame bowed also. "I am pleased to meet you," she said. "Good afternoon! I am from overseas." She paused. "Jade Platter, my name, is."

Osaka smiled again, lifted his lighter higher, and looked around. They were in a stone room with a high, buttressed ceiling, and shelves along the walls. A deeper shadow on one wall indicated an opening and a passageway. "The first question," he muttered, "is where are we? Throughie-m'darlin' can only get us from one side to another, and this doesn't look like one of those box-tombs in the graveyard. Huh. Has to be below the bodies, then. Next question, the egress." He squinted up. "No way to reach the ceiling. Still, there's always the door." He turned to look back at his companion, who had produced a little comb from somewhere and was settling her hair and clothes in order. She seemed a little happier after that. "Question the third, either unimportant or very: why were you up there?"

The dame – Jade Platter – looked at him hopefully. "_Shenme?"_

"Unimportant it is. Time to explore," said Osaka, gesturing to the door.

They explored the high-vaulted room. There were tablets of stone and metal set into the floor and walls, with writing cut into them that spelt out names in blocky English script. He traced the letters of the big slab in the centre of the room, sounding out the words carefully.

_Father Odhran_

_Beloved Founder of our Church_

_Banisher of Malicious Spirits_

_Who will Not be Forgotten_

Scrawled on the stone in paint was written "_Clay! Clay!" _

_"_Ashes to ashes, dust to dust?" asked Osaka.

Jade Platter settled onto the slab like a pile of collapsing fabric, pressing her ear to the stone. "Footsteps," she said briefly, miming walking with her fingers and patted the slab. "Maybe person below. Ah... know way out?"

Osaka shrugged. "Couldn't hurt to ask" he said. There were chips at the edges of the slab, as if someone had been at it with a crowbar, and they managed to get their fingers around it and lever it up, albeit with a lot of language that Osaka was tolerably certain wasn't polite

Below it was dark. "Hello?" called Jade Platter. "Assistance please?" Step. Step. Step. A figure moved into the pool of light cast by Osaka's lighter, though all they could see was the outline of a broad-brimmed black hat.

"I have been below the earth," they heard a very old man say.

"Hey, how's business?" called Osaka cheerily.

"I have journeyed down there. I have been below the ground, to the world below this one. I have seen things... glorious things," the walking man said.

"Hey, Uncle," called Osaka, "we're looking for the way out. Could you help us?" The woman, Jade Platter, elbowed him in the ribs. "Or perhaps we could help you, perhaps?"

The old man looked up and in the flickering little light they saw that he had no eyes, the flesh of his face running smooth from his eyebrows to his cheekbones. He smiled at them with his mouth.

"The place, what we call Hell, is not as bad as it is reported!"_  
_

He leapt out of the hole.

NOTE:

_"How's business?"_ I'd just like to apologise to anyone who might feel irked by my crass attempts to represent an Osaka dialect in English. Wikipedia tells me that Osaka-ben is considered a bit 'earthy' by speakers of different Japanese dialects, somewhat associated with comedy acts, and that _mōkarimakka_, roughly translated as "How's business?" is a stereotypical greeting, somewhat on the level of assuming that all Kiwi farmers say 'G'day' in every conversation. In the first episode of the anime, Keroberous is identified as speaking with an Osaka accent. Other sources tell me it sounds musical and is a bit elliptical. Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me.

_"Shenme?"..._ Mandarin for "What?"

_Kanto-ben_ Japanese as she is spoke around the Tokyo area, so 'standard' Japanese and more likely to be taught to foreigners. Osaka is from elsewhere, and thinks of it as a dialect.

_You. Egg of turtle. Is._ If my (very limited) Japanese does not fail me, sans egregrious punctuation that would be _Anata wa kame no tamago desu_, with the verb _desu _at the back end as is proper. "Turtle egg" is a colloquial way of calling someone a bastard, which is almost certainly no longer current. What the hey.

_Clay! Clay!_ I borrowed Brother Odhran from an old Irish story about the monastery on Iona founded by Saint Columcille. One (boring) version is that he was simply the first to die and be buried there. _The other version_ has it that he was sent down as a human sacrifice to keep the pagan spirits away and when they dug down to check after a month, there he was, still walking. And stuff happened.


	7. Osaka Joe and the Dame from China 3

AUTHORIAL COMMENT: This chapter dedicated to the two people reading this. Thank you very much, Daisy Ninja Girl and Vicks111. :-) I am sorry it took so long.

**Osaka Joe and the Dame from China 3**

_Later:_

He perched on the slanting tiles of his roof with a bottle in one hand and a cup in the other, and addressed the crescent moon that watched gravely over the mess of housing and neon lights that was his city.

_"Susukori brewed," _ he warbled, over the bustling sounds underneath:

_"Susukori brewed  
This august heavy liquor  
And oh, how drunk I am!  
On the evil-chasing,  
Laugh-giving liquor -  
And oh, how drunk I am!"_

He raised his cup again to the cupped moon. "_Kanpai!_"

_Now:_

"The place, what we call Hell, is not as bad as it is reported!"

The old priest leapt out of the hole and landed lightly on the lip, facing slightwise away from Osaka Joe and the dame from China, Jade Platter. They clutched at each other and watched him carefully in the uncertain light cast by a fallen Zippo.

The priest adjusted the wide, flat brim of his hat and turned his head, seeking like a blind worm. Osaka found that he'd clamped a hand over the dame's mouth and the tip of her small nose and was trying to whisper _don't breathe don't breathe don't breathe_ in her ear without making a sound. Her eyes were very wide, and very dark.

"I am sorry," the priest said gently and kindly, "but I cannot see you." In the upcasting light, they saw that the blank of his face was clay, smeared across his eyes and left to harden. "If you would excuse me, children." His withered hand lifted and pried at the old earth.

_Later:_

Keroberous narrowed his beady little bird eyes, picked his moment patiently, and then struck as a hawk strikes, from above. He pinned Jade Platter's chopsticks with his own and said, "That's my dumpling, woman."

She blinked green eyes in a round, plump face. "I no know that word," she said mournfully. "You have dictionary, illustrious Keroberous-sama?"

" 'Dumpling'," he said. " 'Odango'." He mimed eating. "Num num."

"I see, I see, wise and illustrious Keroberous-sama is!"

Keroberous held up a modest yellow paw. "Oh, I guess I've read a few esoteric texts in my time..." Then he realised that the plate was empty.

"You realise this means war?"

Sigh. "I no know that word."

_Now:_

The dame launched herself like an arrow from a bow. (Later, Osaka had a great aching bruise in his shoulder the width of her foot.) She arched over the priest, bounced off a wall, spun in mid-air, and hit the priest between his dusty shoulder blades with all the fast moving weight of her.

"Perhaps another time," he called politely as he fell. The dame landed on the edge of the pit, teetered, and blew a stray lock of hair off her face. "Is kung fu," she explained earnestly, "All Chinese people do this."

Osaka lost no time shoving the covering block in place, yelping as he pinched a finger. The dame helped him. "Is that so? Indeed it is so." He swallowed back a certain sourness in his belly. "Shall we go?"

She nodded, putting her shoulder against the stone.

"Wait! The lighter!"

_Later:_

"Heeeeeey," said Keroberous, lazily swirling a saucer of warm sake in one paw. "So what did you do about those hundred-and-eight hopping vampires and the horde of hidden hitmen, anyway?"

"Is fix," said Jade Platter firmly.

"Oh, we don't need to go into the details," added Osaka with aplomb.

_Now:_

He crouched in the middle of the crypt, hearing breathing not his own, and felt he rasp of his own breath move through his nose and throat and lungs. Dust tickled his nostrils and he started to realise how thirsty he was. In the hand of Old Night, he pondered the turnings ahead and the pitfalls there that lay.

A small plump hand stole into his, and he smiled.

Closing his eyes, he poked a finger where he guessed a nose might be and, after an indignant hiss, plucked his ivory pipe from his pocket, twirled it between his fingers and shook it out to its true length. "Time to let the birdy fly!"

This was magic that Osaka Joe was unfamiliar with, almost brutal as the staff sucked at the power in the marrow of his bones. No chanted iterations here, gentle and inevitable as a turning wheel, feeling his way like a mouse through a forest. He had never summoned more than one Card a day, before and, as his heart hammered and asphyxiation made little lights in his eyes, wondered what kind of monster Clow Reed-sensei had been, and what he himself was doing in this league.

"RELEASE!" he chanted.

The stone was singing, with voices, or maybe that was the roaring in his ears as the lights drifted upwards revealing high glorious arches of textured stonework. "Beautiful," he breathed, and the darkness took him again.

_Later:_

He woke in the middle of the night, hearing breathing not his own. Kero-kun snored lightly in his bedbox. Osaka supported himself with one elbow and looked. Across the dimness of the room: Jade Platter-san was curled on her side under a quilt sewn with stars, one hand curled up near her mouth like a baby, breathing steadily and smoothly. Everything was all right then, Osaka thought happily, and closed his eyes.

_Now:_

When he came to, he was resting on something soft and warm. It was fragrant, too – Mmm, lemon-blossom. He opened his eyes and looked into Jade Platter's own jade green ones. The girl was cradling him in her arms. She blushed. Osaka couldn't help but reciprocate. Cursed capillaries!

"See?" he said. "Embarrassing."

Osaka eased himself upright and looked around. They were in a different room now, small, with a nip of outside air in it. The small, sweet lights of the Glow had settled around them, gently fading away.

He put one hand to his brow. "I feel another swoon coming on." The dame looked at him in mild bemusement and ducked to lift him onto her shoulder in a fireman's lift. "I'm up! I'm up! Look, I see a light!"

After that, finding the exit didn't take long – a few turns through disused corridors and one, unexpected, ladies' dressing room (_Kyaaaaaa!_) and they found a side door into an alley. And there was Keroberous, caught in the headlights as it were. Jade Platter stared at him ferociously, and then muttered quietly, counting off on each finger, "Cutey, creepy... Ah! Wonderful!" She patted one shoulder hopefully.

Keroberous eyed her oddly for a moment, his long tufted tail corkscrewing. Then he drifted calmly through the air and landed on the Chinese dame's small shoulder. He sighed happily. "I like this one, Boss. Can we keep her?"

"It's a little more complicated than that," said Osaka quietly, not taking his eyes off the lady.

Keroberous waved a dismissive paw. "Invite her to dinner."

_Later:_

The dame didn't even stay for breakfast.

At the doorway, Osaka blinked pitiful big puppy eyes and said, "Maybe you need a job? I could give you a job. I need a secretary! The pay isn't much, but there's board and I cook! I cook food lots!."

Keroberous nodded vigorously in agreement, but Jade Platter would not stay. Asking the little yellow beasty to translate, she said, "Forgive me, honourable sir, it is not that I dislike you. But you seem determined on a life of grand adventure and events of interest and I... I do not want to be there to watch you die. Thank you very much for dinner."

"Anytime," Osaka breathed, as he watched her trot down the dawn-dappled street.

He shaded his eyes against the glint of the new sun.

"That went well?"

NOTES:

_Susukori brewed..._ Original: _Susukori ga/ Kamishi miki ni/ Ware einikeri/ Kotonagushi/ Egushi ni/ Ware einikeri. _It's from a very, very, and very old collection of Japanese poetry, the _Kojiki_. Translation lifted from Miner, E. (1968) _An Introduction to Japanese Court Poetry._ Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.

"_Kung fu is... All Chinese people do that._" Lifted from _Petshop of Horrors._

_"Cutey, creepy..."_ In Japanese, _Kawai kute kowai._ Yes, I am being twee. In another language. I'm just that kind of person, sorry.


	8. 8 Power

**Osaka Joe: Strength**

_Card appearing: The Power_

The back room of the boxing club stank of acrid sweat and old tobacco smoke.

Keroberous mopped Osaka's brow and the back of his neck with a sweat-sodden towel and dropped it to briskly rub the detective's taut shoulders. "Sting like a butterfly! Float like a bee! ... Hang on."

Osaka doffed his shirt, slung his braces back up around his shoulders, and strode back to a table surrounded by rough, beery men. They grunted and cheered as he threw himself back into the chair and faced again the current champion of this Underworld arm-wrestling tournament: a small girl of great pinkness.

She blinked happy eyes, took his sweaty paw in flower-like hand, and slammed it down against the table.

A bell rang. "Point!" cried the announcer, "Point to Mysterious Contender in Pink! Next contender!"

The audience fell silent, and some rubbed their aching arms. None volunteered. "Me!" cried Osaka, and set his arm for another attempt to defeat the Power: his patience could wind into infinity.

Three days later, the Power got bored and conceded.

_End_


End file.
